


Beast Of Burden

by obsolete_theory (ersatzbeta)



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Anachronistic, Crack, Drug Use, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 10:41:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2425775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ersatzbeta/pseuds/obsolete_theory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a bastard prince sucked. Being a deposed bastard prince who had been cursed and driven out of his own damn kingdom by his stepmom—a witch if ever there was—sucked even more.</p>
<p>But being a donkey? That sucked the most, hands (hooves) down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beast Of Burden

**Author's Note:**

> Originally done for the weissvsaiyuki comm on LJ. It's (sigh) a WIP at this point, but I have very clear plans for the rest of it, which helps.
> 
> Also, I should probably warn for copious swearing and drug use. Yep. Swearing donkey on drugs. Enjoy! XD
> 
>  
> 
> .

Being a bastard prince sucked.

Being a deposed bastard prince who had been cursed and driven out of his own damn kingdom by his stepmom—a witch if ever there was—sucked even more.

But being a donkey? That sucked the most, hands (hooves) down.

 

Despite his dark thoughts, his tail swished perkily behind him.

Sometimes Gojyo hated his life.

  
  
  


Back it up:

 

Once upon a time, in a kingdom most excellent and rad and kind of progressive, there lived a king, his queen, and the king’s two sons. The older prince was the legitimate heir to the throne, the offspring of the king and his queen. The younger prince was a bastard, but his old man was open about it. The king loved both his sons equally, and thus the younger prince was in the line for succession, should his brother kick it too soon.

Unfortunately, the queen was not so loving and optimistic as the king. She hated the younger prince and had arranged, many times, for a definitive, violent end to his life. Miraculously, he escaped, time after time, with only minor injuries. This infuriated the queen (and made her question her decision to refuse the presence of fairy godmothers at the youngest prince’s name-day celebration. Those fairies were always sticking their noses into things that were none of their business, and the young prince’s narrow escapes smacked of supernatural intervention.)

She’d tried all the traditional routes: poisoned apples, falling rocks, cursed spindles, vicious man-eating wolves…she’d even tried to hire the funny little man with the long name, but he was retired.

The queen couldn’t even get his horse to throw him and trample him. The one time she really spooked his horse, it tossed the prince into some brambles. The queen had been hoping for an eye gouging, at the very least (those were some seriously long and pokey thorns) but all that happened was that the prince got three scratches on his cheek. All the available princesses seemed to find the resulting scars very dashing, and there was a fresh clamor for marriages all around, which was something else the queen was trying to avoid for the younger prince. A royal marriage would make it even harder for her to get rid of him.

The queen decided then that hiring assassins and setting up clever traps wasn’t the way to go. Wasn’t she a premiere witch? Didn’t she have her own power? It was better if she weren’t directly the cause of the young prince’s death, but what else could she do?

So zippity zappity Abracadabra, the queen turned the prince into a donkey and (in disguise of course) sold him to the nearest mule skinner. After she washed the donkey smell off her hands and changed her clothes, the queen made up a tearful story, claiming that the reckless young prince had tired of being second in line and had run away. No one could prove he hadn't, and it was very much the younger prince’s modus operandi to never leave a message when he went haring off somewhere, so the queen's story was believed. (There were no small number of princesses there to visit the young prince who then cut short their visits to the kingdom, which was kind of a bonus for everyone, truth be told.) The queen was content, believing she had finally gotten rid of the prince.

It was the Prince's luck again that the queen didn't know that mule skinners didn't kill and skin the beasts of burden. They bought them, drove them to different places, and sold them, but they didn’t kill.

The prince, while pissed off and now a donkey, was at least alive and able to escape a life of drudgery at the hands of the muleteers (he ran off as soon as he had the chance and had been evading capture ever since.) Now all the prince would have to do was get his feet under him--metaphorically speaking--find a way to break the spell, and get home again.

Piece of fucking cake.

Right?

  
  
  


Prince Gojyo was on the road, just outside a little village that he’d never seen before in his life, when he smelled the most delicious smell he'd ever smelled in his life. It smelled like everything he never knew he wanted, like every tasty thing he’d ever eaten, like new mown hay at the height of summer, like clover and green things that his donkey tongue craved and that left his inner prince completely baffled. (He’d always made it a point to avoid vegetables whenever possible. It was probably part of the queen’s evil plans, to make him a vegetarian before she had him killed.)

He drooled copiously as he walked, following the smell. He just had to know what it was.

Gojyo split off from the main road onto a goat-track. The path curved around a wooded hill, where it met with a stream. Grumbling, Gojyo crossed the water. It was icy cold on his belly and, for a moment, he panicked when the stream deepened and it splashed across his withers. Donkeys, he discovered, don’t float very well. He struggled through the deepest part and heaved a great sigh when his hooves touched the bed of the stream again. When he clambered out of the water, Gojyo shook himself off. The nice smell was stronger on this side of the stream, which was a plus, but whatever it was that he was trying to find had better be fucking good--he was going to have to turn himself around, cross the stream again, and all that crap to get back to the main road once he satisfied his curiosity.

Wet, cold, and tired, Gojyo picked his way through a thin line of trees. The trees opened up onto a field, bordered by a low stone wall. Of course there was a wall. Gojyo climbed up over it, not trusting himself to jump over it. He still landed on the other side with a jarring thump, destroying some hapless greenery along the way.

Gojyo froze. The scent of whatever it was was so strong it felt like he’d been punched. He swung his neck around, looking for the thing that smelled so nice. Gojyo sniffed at the plant he’d crushed.

That was the smell! These plants...made the smell? Gojyo lowered his head and took a good sniff.

Green exploded in his face, and drool flooded his mouth. He slurped it back just so he didn’t choke to death.

The plant smelled _delicious_.

Gojyo looked around.  It was all around him! The plants , tall and spiky and green, were everywhere,  a whole field of them, growing. There was no one around, and virtually no plants but the delicious smelling ones. It was the greenest, nicest field he'd ever seen--not that he’d seen a lot because, you know, prince who lived in a palace and spent a lot of time ducking the boring responsibilities like visiting farmers and their fields.

He surveyed the field again: not a farmer in sight. And, frankly, it didn’t look like anyone’d been farming here. Now that he really looked (not that he knew what he was looking at) there was more than just the tall green plants. There was a lot of grass and...other plants. Clover and stuff.

It was just perfect for a hungry, tired donkey. He had worked up a serious appetite on this little detour. There was no one there. And it wouldn’t hurt the field if he had just a little nibble, would it?

Gojyo began to eat his way along the stone wall. He mowed everything down in his path, side to side from the stone wall to as far as he could comfortably stretch his neck. Huh. Gojyo thought there might be just one little advantage to being a donkey: donkeys have really long necks.

He lifted his head to see how far he’d eaten, and he licked his teeth to get all the little green bits off them. (He might not have hands or a toothbrush any more, but he was still a prince, and no prince liked to wander around with teeth full of salad. Especially not if those teeth were big honking donkey teeth.)

He had come a couple of yards, and he should have felt less hungry, but it felt like the more he ate of the delicious plant, the more delicious it tasted. Gojyo flicked his tail, considering. He was still drooling, and the field smelled better than ever.

Surely a little more wouldn’t hurt.

Gojyo put his head back down and chomped away. This stuff was amazing! It was so green and tasty! Gojyo knew he was slobbering, but he didn’t really care. He was a donkey, okay? Donkeys drool, especially when they were stuffing themselves on something so damn tasty. Fuck. Gojyo felt himself shiver with the taste of it. Fucking a this was delicious. A leaf got stuck under his lip, and he fished around for it, desperately.

Humph. Crunch. Snaffle. Snort.

Yum.

  
  


When Gojyo licked up a mouthful of old straw, it was enough to break him out of his intense eating spree. What the hell was nasty old straw doing in the middle of his delicious field of deliciousness? Gojyo blinked and worked to focus on the plant that was directly in front of his face.

Strawberries. There were acres of strawberries there, plump and red and--Gojyo’s tongue snaked out--uhm, yes. Juicy and delicious. Gojyo felt like he’d died and gone to heaven. No one would miss just a few berries, would they? Just---slurp--a few. He was--crunch--almost full anyways. (But he still felt so hungry!)

Good goddamn, those strawberries were amazing. Gojyo ate a cluster of them and frowned at the plants in front of him. Great. He’d eaten bits off of several of them and now it looked so lopsided and obvious.

Maybe, if he ate his way along the row, it wouldn’t look so uneven. Gojyo licked strawberry juice off his chin and eyed the red, shiny, delicious-looking berries. Yeah. That was a good idea. His teeth itched with anticipation.

Everything after that passed in a blur of food, food, _food_.

  
  
  
  
  


The first thought Gojyo had upon waking was how bad he needed a privy. He was going to explode.

He flailed around, trying to get his legs underneath him. Nothing was cooperating!

Gojyo realized two things simultaneously: one--he was still a donkey and therefore can piss wherever he wants. Two, he was not going anywhere because he was tied up like a fucking turkey at a feast. Something at the end of his nose burned like fuck, and if he tried to move his head too far it pulled, hard, and made his eyes water. His nose was tied to a rope, and the rope was tied to a loop in a wall of what Gojyo guesses is some barn stall somewhere. He strained his eyes, but there was only so much he could see when he could only train one eye at a time on the problem.

He didn’t remember when he went to sleep, or where, but he sure as hell didn’t think he just walked into a barn and tied himself up without even enough room to pee in comfort.

Well, shit.

Gojyo craned his neck around and made sure he wasn’t going to release the hounds on anyone or anything important.

He peed for for-fucking-ever and tried to ignore the part where he splashed his own back hooves. (He is going to kick the shit out of whoever tied him up, just as soon as he lays eyes on them. Never once since he made his escape from the skinners had he gotten backsplash like this, and he was sure it was because he couldn’t move freely.)

Gojyo slumped against his stall as soon as he finished. He was ready to go back to sleep now, thank you very much. Gojyo caught a whiff of something in the air--the delicious plant! But at that very second, it turned Gojyo’s stomach completely.

He found out the unpleasant way that donkeys can’t vomit. His stomach churned and churned and it went fucking nowhere, and so Gojyo resorted to sticking his head into the basket of hay that’s in front of him. He tried to breathe slowly, to smell only the smell of the hay, and to not think about green plants and strawberries.

It only mostly worked.

Gojyo vowed never to eat another strawberry again in his life.

“Well, you certainly look miserable.”

Gojyo whipped his head up at the voice and was instantly hit with intense, horrible vertigo. There was a man--two men? No, just one--standing respectfully out of kicking range.

“I must admit,” the man said. “I didn’t know if you would wake up today or not.”

The man smiled at him.

“You’ve been sleeping it off for three days,” he said. “I would imagine you feel terrible right now.”

Gojyo blinked.

The man sighed, and the smile disappeared like the sun behind clouds.

“Of course you don’t understand me,” he said. “You’re a donkey.”

He rubbed a hand over his face.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” said the man. “Put you to work, I suppose.”

Gojyo’s ears flattened.

The man took a firm grip on the lead, untied it from the wall, and tugged.

“Come along now,” said the man. “Up. Let’s get a good look at you.”

Gojyo dug his feet into the floor and braced himself against the burning in his nose.

The man frowned at him. With one hand, he lifted Gojyo’s head upward, so they can see eye to eye. This man was _strong_. Gojyo fought against him anyway and got a pulled neck muscle for his trouble.

“You will work or you will not eat,” said the man. “I can hardly afford to feed you if you don’t, especially considering how much of my crops you ate.”

The man tugged at the rope again. Gojyo didn’t budge.

“I could geld you,” said the man. “By rights I ought to. You don’t belong to anyone around here. I imagine you might be a good deal less frisky if I did.”

Gojyo prepared for the mother of all kicks and sneers at the man. This guy was gonna get it right in the nuts if he didn’t leave Gojyo alone right now. Geld him? He was a prince! A four-legged, long-eared prince!

He let the man have it with both hind feet.

Gojyo missed. The man dodged his hooves like he did that sort of thing every day, like he wasn’t even concerned that Gojyo could break his legs or leave him pissing blood for a week.

And, to add insult to injury, when Gojyo’s feet came down, his hooves slipped, and he slid backward, propelled on his own, fresh donkey pee.

The wind was totally knocked out of Gojyo’s lungs, and he struggled to right himself. This, of course, was complicated by the fact that the man was towing him by his nose, was pulling him completely out of the stall.

Gojyo finally got up again, to find the man was laughing at him.

He snapped his teeth just shy of the man’s hand and gave him the best glare he could muster.

“My name is Hakkai,” said the man. “I think I’m going to like having you around.”

And, because Gojyo wasn’t a talking magical donkey, oh, no, just a regular one, he can only bray in response.

Hakkai smiled at him like he understood.

“Let me show you the farm,” said Hakkai.


End file.
